Intro to Attachment

One of the most important and most fascinating items on my adoption prep list is to put together a plan to promote a secure attachment with our children. The book I'm reading right now is called Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents by Deborah Gray. I was impressed right away with the book when I read the following personal note of the author:
I have come to acknowledge myself as an attachment-disordered child of a loving God, slow to trust and confused between life and God, in spite of evidence of love. I am grateful for this extravagant love, flowing through my life, through my work.
She goes on to explain that the relationship between a parent and a child is the template a child uses for all other relationships. In a secure attachment, children know there are lovable, that they can trust their parents, and that their needs will be met. Children who are adopted often have this primary relationship of their lives disrupted. Because of this, children such as those who are adopted from orphanages in Ukraine have more developmental and emotional work to do as they grow up than children who grew up with their birth families. We're told that a normal healthy process of attachment of a child after an international adoption may take up to two years. All that on top of learning a new language!